


In the Wings

by Dolorosa



Category: Ballet Shoes - Noel Streatfeild, Code Name Verity - Elizabeth Wein
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-04
Updated: 2016-06-04
Packaged: 2018-07-12 04:59:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7086403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dolorosa/pseuds/Dolorosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Petrova Fossil is a new pilot in the Air Transport Auxiliary, and is finding her role more challenging than she expected. Luckily, she encounters exactly the right people to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Wings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Deepdarkwaters](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deepdarkwaters/gifts).



Petrova hovered anxiously in the entrance of the hangar, unsure of where to go next. She had taken off her cap and goggles, and was turning them over and over in her hands with a restless, nervous energy. She could not stand still, and almost wondered if she should employ one of the half-remembered tricks from her time at the Academy — techniques to keep herself calm and steady when waiting for hours in a theatre before an audition, or to prevent herself from pacing up and down while waiting in the wings before an entrance onto the stage. She felt worse than she had ever done since she had signed up for the Air Transport Auxiliary and first donned her ATA uniform.

Outside the hangar, the base was a hive of activity. People scurried about between buildings, carrying all sorts of familiar and unfamiliar equipment, or ferried messages — radio codes, Petrova supposed — from place to place. There were still several older men working on the aeroplane, and Petrova half thought she might go and join them, if only to give herself something to do, something to quiet the rush of thoughts in her mind. She took a step in their direction, but was halted by the tap of a hand on her shoulder.

‘You one of the new ATA girls who flew in today?’

Petrova nodded tightly, not trusting herself to speak in case she broke down and cried in front of the kind-faced woman who had suddenly appeared behind her.

‘Are those all your things?’ asked the woman, gesturing at the small bag Petrova had carried off from the aeroplane. 

When Petrova nodded in confirmation, the woman took her by the arm, and, in a voice that brooked no disagreement, said, ‘you look like you could do with a cup of tea!’

*

‘It’s not real tea, of course — ersatz coffee is all we’re able to get at the moment, but it’s hot in your hands and steam rises from the mug, so it’s comforting enough, if not particularly tasty,’ said the woman apologetically, after she had brought Petrova inside from the airfield. 

‘Also, supper’s not served for hours, so it’s all you’re going to get until then, and, if you don’t mind my saying, you really look as if you need it.’

Petrova still didn’t trust herself to speak, so she settled for smiling awkwardly as the woman fetched mugs and teaspoons, and a tin which presumably contained the ersatz coffee (which she opened and sniffed, pronouncing its smell ‘disgusting’).

‘They don’t really like us eating between meals,’ the woman said, in conspiratorial tones, ‘but I’ve got an arrangement with some of the ladies who work in the canteen, and they let me sneak in here and make hot drinks in the embers of the fire — it’s a wood stove, see?’

She handed a steaming mug to Petrova, and turned to pour her own drink.

‘We used to make tea like that in the nursery, when I was a child,’ said Petrova, and all of a sudden she couldn’t hold herself together any longer, and she slumped against the kitchen bench and cried.

The woman took Petrova’s drink.

‘That bad, is it?’ she said, sniffing at the coffee with an exaggerated expression of horror. 

‘Why don’t we sit down in the canteen — see, it’s empty at this time of day — and you can tell me all about it.’

*

Sitting across the table from this kind woman — who looked almost _regal_ , somehow –—and armed with a warm drink, Petrova felt ridiculous after her outburst in the kitchen.

‘I feel so embarrassed,’ she said, ‘considering the kinds of grave problems everyone else here is facing. My family is safe, I don’t know anyone fighting on the front, and I’m finally flying again.’

‘But?’ said the woman, sipping her coffee. ‘Just because it’s not a big fear, doesn’t mean you’re not frightened. Oh, if you knew some of the things that frightened me!’

‘I just — I don’t know what’s wrong with me,’ said Petrova. ‘It used to be so natural! I got my license before the war — they were all very impressed with me, as I was very young, only seventeen, and a girl at that — and I spent _hours_ in the air, and it was easy. I never felt the slightest bit frightened or uncomfortable, no matter what the weather, the aeroplanes were always steady in my hands, and moving the controls was like learning a language, or learning to read as a child, easily understandable, not like learning at all, if you see what I mean?’

The woman nodded, her fair hair catching the late afternoon sunlight.

‘My sister — she is a ballerina, not like me at all — she used to say that dancing was almost like breathing to her, and she had this utter serenity, secure in the knowledge that her feet would do exactly as she wanted, whenever she put on a pair of ballet shoes. It was like that for me when I put my hands on the controls of an aeroplane. I was comfortable. It was like I fit perfectly, a part of the machinery.’

‘And now?’ the woman prompted.

Petrova sighed.

‘And now it’s as if there’s something blocking me. I feel anxious every time I climb into the cockpit. I was so proud of being accepted into the ATA, and I was one of the first women, and youngest people to be permitted to start flying, but it’s not the pressure, nor the weight of expectation, exactly. It just used to feel right, and now there’s a wrongness about it, somehow.’

‘It seems to me,’ said the woman, ‘that you need to figure out what has changed. What’s the difference between flying as a civilian, and flying in wartime?’

‘That’s what makes no sense!’ said Petrova in anguish. ‘It’s not as if I’m flying on bombing raids or getting into dogfights with German fighter pilots! I’m just flying the same aeroplanes I’ve flown for the past three years!’

She buried her face in her hands.

‘I’m not a pilot,’ the woman said, ‘and in fact what you pilots do seems like wizardry to me, so I might not be ideally placed to work out what the matter really is. But I know someone who can help you. Mind if I bring her in?’

Petrova felt mildly horrified at the prospect of telling her tale of woe all over again, and to another person, but there was nothing for it. She had to get back her confidence in the air.

She nodded her assent.

*

Presently, the woman returned, accompanied by another woman — again, older than Petrova, but still young, with an inquisitive, friendly face.

‘Meet Maddie Brodatt, all round good friend, and pilot extraordinaire! If anyone can get your wings back, it’s her.’

Maddie flushed a little at this enthusiastic introduction, and turned to Petrova.

‘She’s already filled me in — you’re having trouble adjusting to flying in a military context?’

‘ “A military context”,’ said Petrova. ‘That makes it sound so serious — as if we’re doing bombing raids over the Channel. I mean, it’s obviously vitally important work, and I’m proud as anything that I’m able to be a part of it, but I feel so ridiculous getting this affected by it. I used to be a calm and capable pilot, and now it’s as if I’ve forgotten how to fly. This last flight, when I came here, I almost lost control of the plane! After I’d landed, I had to sit still on the runway for several minutes to get myself under control. It was horrible!’

Maddie looked at her steadily.

‘Was your plane armed’ she asked. ‘Oh, I know the weapons won’t have been loaded, but were they on the aeroplane? Were they there in your sight?’

‘Yes,’ said Petrova, ‘but I hardly see how that —’

‘That will be it, then,’ said Maddie. ‘It’s the weapons. Think back to all the times you’ve been flying since the war began. Think about what sorts of aircraft you were flying, and think about the weapons they had on board.’

Petrova considered this while she finished off the dregs of her coffee.

‘You may be right,’ she said.

‘The weapons are distracting,’ said Maddie. ‘You see them, and it reminds you why you’re in the air in the first place, the responsibility, the lives at risk, and suddenly the weight of it is unbearable. It’s terrifying.’

‘You’re still flying,’ said Petrova, and then, more quietly, ‘how did you make it go away?’

‘It never really goes away,’ said Maddie, with a sad smile, ‘but you can make it quieter and less overwhelming. How are your skills as a technician?’

‘I grew up working on cars with Mr Simpson — with one of the boarders at our house — and I graduated to aeroplanes while I was studying for my pilot’s license, so I suppose you could say I know my way around the insides of most pieces of machinery.’

‘Good,’ said Maddie. ‘That is exactly what I wanted to hear. I’ll bring you out with me to the hangars whenever you can be spared – even for half an hour at a time, if that’s all you’ve got free. And we will muck in with the engineers and do anything that needs to be done: repairs, refuelling, even polishing the propellers if that’s all that’s needed. You’ll get your hands dirty, but somehow I don’t think you’re the kind of girl who’ll mind that. It’s good, hard work, and it brings you back to yourself, and reminds you why you started flying in the first place. It helps you get back that feeling of the aeroplane being a piece of machinery that comes to life under your hands. And it makes you too tired to worry.’

Maddie’s voice was soothing, and her suggestion, combined with the warmth of the ersatz coffee and the kindness being shown to her had an extraordinary effect on Petrova. For the first time in months, she felt hopeful. The thought of donning overalls and tinkering with equipment took her back to those glorious Sundays of her childhood, all those hours spent in industrious bliss at the garage. Her hands tingled. She could almost smell the grease.

‘When do we begin?’ she said. 

**Author's Note:**

> Dear recipient, thank you so much for your prompt of a _Ballet Shoes_ / _Code Name Verity_ crossover, which allowed me to bring together two fantastic canons. I hope I was able to do those canons, and their wonderful characters justice.
> 
> In terms of timelines, this fic obviously takes place after the events of _Ballet Shoes_ — Petrova is about eighteen or nineteen years old. This places it within the years covered by _Code Name Verity_ , after Maddie has begun flying for the ATA, but before the central events of the book occur.


End file.
